From Dr. Gary Kompothecras and Beth Kompothecras

We are writing this together, because we lived it together.

In 2020, Beth had full-blown COVID. In 2023, less than two years after a clean screening colonoscopy, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. Surgeons removed twenty-four inches of her colon and forty-four lymph nodes. Then came six rounds of chemotherapy. By every measure her oncologists used, the treatment worked. By the measure that mattered to us, it did not. For more than two years afterward, Beth did everything conventional and integrative medicine could offer, and the cells that actually fight cancer and infection, her lymphocytes, kept falling, all the way to 525. She was told she was cancer-free. She was not well, and no one could tell us what to do about it.

In early 2026, Beth saw Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong interviewed by Tucker Carlson. She came to me and said, this man is describing me. He was talking about a number on a routine blood test that oncology has overlooked for fifty years, and about a way to restore it. I made calls. Because of relationships I have been fortunate to build with people in the Trump administration and with Secretary Kennedy, we found a way to get Beth enrolled in a trial at the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Medicine in California. We say that plainly, and with some discomfort, because most families cannot make those calls. That is exactly why we are writing.

Over twenty weeks, Beth received ten injections of Anktiva. After the first one, her lymphocytes went from 525 to 1,400. By July they had settled between 1,100 and 1,200 and stayed there. For the first time since that ski trip in 2023, my wife is herself again.

"I have been a patient in a lot of places over the last three years. I have never been treated the way Dr. Soon-Shiong and his team treated me. They knew my name. They explained the science to me in plain language and never talked down to me. They watched my numbers as closely as I did, and they celebrated with me when they came back. He is a brilliant scientist, and he is a genuinely wonderful man. Those two things do not always come together. In him they do."Beth

We are not scientists, and we are not asking anyone to take our word for the science. The FDA has approved this medicine. The trial data is public. The blood test costs about four dollars. What we can speak to is what we watched happen in our own home, and what we saw at that Institute: a team that has committed its life to putting the immune system, the body's own defense, back at the center of cancer care.

Our ask of Secretary Kennedy is simple. Put this medicine at the forefront of the fight against this horrible disease. Not behind it, not someday. Make sure the number that predicted Beth's suffering is read on every cancer patient's chart, and make sure that the next Beth can be treated without knowing anyone. We were lucky. Luck should not be part of the protocol.

With gratitude to Dr. Soon-Shiong, to his team, and to everyone who helped us get there,

Dr. Gary Kompothecras and Beth Kompothecras
Sarasota, Florida · September 2026